The audience of mimicry events had to satisfy themselves with the bare minimum of laughs. Photo: Nelson K PaulTintumon stepped out of his house, he heard birds chirping on the branches of a tree (imitates sound). He walked further, a KTM Duke bike zoomed past him (imitates sound). He thought why not watch a movie and walked into a theater – swasakosham sponge pole aanu...(imitates the narrator's voice from the famous anti-smoking awareness ad)....”. At least half of the contestants followed this or a similar pattern in two mimicry events that took place Wednesday at the 57th Kerala State School Kalolsavam.
The crowd, which turned in up large numbers to watch mimicry at Kannur's Town Square, had to be content with the bare minimum of laughs. The first mimicry event was that of high school girls and the judges, while announcing the result, said the quality of the imitating art was below par.
“Try not to repeat what others have been doing for years. It's high time the contestants stopped doing the cat and dog mimicry,” Muhammed Haneefa, one of the judges, said.
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Things were a wee bit better when the contest for higher secondary boys began. In fact, the first contestant, Adarsh M.S., thrilled the audience with his unique imitation of a DJ performance. But others stuck to the tried-and-tested-beyond-boredom pattern.
From grass-cutting machines to hair-trimmers, from prime minister Narendra Modi to former Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy to SNDP Yogam supremo Vellapally Natesan, from actor Janardhanan to Soubin Shahir – we have seen it all before.
When the results came, a deserving Adarsh won the first prize. This time, Haneefa said, “Boys were slightly better with their content and some of them used new bottle to serve old wine. But that does not change the fact that exciting ideas stayed away from the stage. Many mimicked the sound of trains, but they should know that the sound of trains have changed in the past 40 years.”
Despite the average quality of mimicry, the crowd stayed on throughout the two events. As the venue was so close to the main road, passersby too paused to watch the contest.
N.B: Wonder why nobody tried to mimic the voice of our chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan in Kannur. I guess the answer is in this very previous sentence itself.
